# MiG-21 Retires: How the Iconic Jet Shaped the Indian Air Force | S3 | Ep 24

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 26 Sep 2025, 1 h 04 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67905677/26_sep_25_defence_26_sep_128.mp3

The Indian Air Force has retired the MiG-21 – the iconic Soviet-era fighter aircraft—that became the most produced supersonic jet in history and the backbone of the IAF. The Mig-21 trained generations of Indian Air Force pilots and defended India’s skies for six decades. Recorded around Mig-21’s farewell at Air Force Station, Chandigarh, this special episode of In Our Defence with national security expert Sandeep Unnithan dives into the jet’s history, upgrades, combat stories, the debate over safety, and its legacy. Host Dev Goswami and Sandeep unpack how a 1960s Soviet interceptor became India’s backbone, why it attracted the “flying coffin” label, what the Bison upgrade really changed, and how the MiG-21’s dominance shaped IAF training and doctrine. Tune in! Image of the first women IAF fighter pilots- Avani Chaturvedi, Bhawana Kanth and Mohana Singh Produced by Taniya Dutta Sound Mix by Aman Pal

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to season three of In Our Defense, the podcast
[0:08] Speaker 2: that takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
[0:12] Speaker 2: Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
[0:16] Speaker 2: and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
[0:20] Speaker 2: to decode all things to do with India security and
[0:23] Speaker 2: explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
[0:27] Speaker 2: stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
[0:32] Speaker 1: This is in Our Defense.
[0:35] Speaker 2: This week is going to be a very special episode.
[0:38] Speaker 2: We're going to talk about one of the most iconic
[0:40] Speaker 2: fighter jets ever made in the world, fighter jet that
[0:44] Speaker 2: at one point was the Indian Air Force, the Make
[0:48] Speaker 2: twenty one. We're recording this a couple of days before
[0:51] Speaker 2: the Make twenty one is formally retired in a ceremony
[0:53] Speaker 2: that will be held at the Chandigard Air Force Base.
[0:55] Speaker 2: In fact, I think the episode will come out on
[0:58] Speaker 2: the evening of the ceremony. The ceremon it takes place
[1:00] Speaker 2: on Friday morning, and this episode should be out both
[1:03] Speaker 2: on YouTube and audio by Friday evening. And this gives
[1:09] Speaker 2: me the perfect opportunity to dive deep into the history
[1:13] Speaker 2: of this aircraft that to be fair, when I was
[1:17] Speaker 2: growing up, made some very bad and terrible headlines. I
[1:21] Speaker 2: think the media was to blame for a major part
[1:23] Speaker 2: of it. And I'm in the media, so I can
[1:26] Speaker 2: I can say that with some sort of surety. When
[1:29] Speaker 2: it gave the mid twenty one, I would say, nonsense
[1:32] Speaker 2: labels such as the flying Coffin and stuff like that.
[1:37] Speaker 2: But what makes this aircraft so legendary? Why was it
[1:42] Speaker 2: once the bulk of the Indian Air Force? Why did
[1:45] Speaker 2: the Air Force take so long to retire it? For
[1:47] Speaker 2: this and more, I have with me Sandy.
[1:51] Speaker 3: Goody good to be back.
[1:53] Speaker 1: Excited about the topic and absolutely.
[1:55] Speaker 3: Mid twenty one it always takes you back into time,
[1:57] Speaker 3: you know, actually time machine yea.
[2:00] Speaker 2: Literally the Air Force has had it for sixty odd
[2:03] Speaker 2: years now, and we'll talk a lot about this and
[2:07] Speaker 2: the fact that why even at sixty two years of
[2:11] Speaker 2: being in operation, it does not still make it an
[2:13] Speaker 2: old fighter jet that you would think about. But before
[2:16] Speaker 2: we get into all of that, a couple of things
[2:19] Speaker 2: you were talking about before before we begin recording some
[2:21] Speaker 2: deep and I think I want to have that piece
[2:23] Speaker 2: of trivia out for our viewers and listeners. In fact,
[2:26] Speaker 2: we won't have that trivia out right now, but we'll
[2:28] Speaker 2: talk about the question in fact, is that what country
[2:34] Speaker 2: and this is the Western country by the way, is
[2:36] Speaker 2: going to be the largest operator of the Mike twenty
[2:38] Speaker 2: one after the Air Force retires them, as hasitat them
[2:42] Speaker 2: actually by the time.
[2:42] Speaker 1: As episodes of this morning.
[2:45] Speaker 2: And also what is the connection of the Make twenty
[2:48] Speaker 2: one to Top Gun, not the movie, but the flying school.
[2:51] Speaker 1: On which the movie was based.
[2:53] Speaker 2: We'll talk about that towards the end of the episode,
[2:55] Speaker 2: so please stay with us.
[2:56] Speaker 1: We will be a fascinating episode.
[2:58] Speaker 2: Something I want to start actually by talking about Russian
[3:01] Speaker 2: jets in general, because I think Russian fighter jets just
[3:06] Speaker 2: look damn sexy.
[3:08] Speaker 3: You know, if I.
[3:09] Speaker 2: Were to compared them to like Western fighters, they seem
[3:13] Speaker 2: to have character. Whether you have the make money one
[3:15] Speaker 2: of the iconic nos, whether you have that hulk of
[3:18] Speaker 2: a sukuoi or you have that I actually found on
[3:21] Speaker 2: during my research, the forty seven that never actually was
[3:25] Speaker 2: in service, but an experimental plane that had forwards weat.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I'm at the pilot.
[3:31] Speaker 3: I'm in the test pilot by the way.
[3:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, So do you agree with me that Russian fighter
[3:35] Speaker 2: jets seem to have a very sort of a characteristic design.
[3:38] Speaker 3: They've not just Russian fighter jets. Every single Russian military
[3:44] Speaker 3: hardware has a warlike look about it, okay, right there,
[3:48] Speaker 3: whether it is the missile boats, whether it's the destroyers,
[3:51] Speaker 3: the tanks, the assault rifles, and of course the fighter jets.
[3:55] Speaker 3: They look like fighter jets. They look like war machines,
[3:58] Speaker 3: you know. And because I'm I'm a Trekkie, I'm a
[4:02] Speaker 3: Star Trek fan. And if you see in Star Trek,
[4:05] Speaker 3: also the coolest ships, the most menacing looking ships up
[4:10] Speaker 3: from the Klingon Federation, right, they have the deadliest looking
[4:15] Speaker 3: birds of prey. And you see a bird of prey
[4:17] Speaker 3: versus a US S enterprise, a very harmless looking kind
[4:21] Speaker 3: of thing, right, But when you see the kling On
[4:23] Speaker 3: bird of prey, it's a menacing aircraft. Similarly, the Russian Federation,
[4:27] Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, their aircraft look really deadly, I mean,
[4:31] Speaker 3: you know. And to cut a long story short, a
[4:34] Speaker 3: couple of years back, I was in Moscow and someone said,
[4:38] Speaker 3: there's a new sou fifty seven on static display. You
[4:41] Speaker 3: want to go and see it? I said, hell, yes,
[4:43] Speaker 3: what are you asking me about? And when I saw
[4:45] Speaker 3: the sou fifty seven. I have to tell you they've
[4:48] Speaker 3: had an out of body experience right when I saw
[4:51] Speaker 3: the aircraft and I compared it to that scene in Firefox.
[4:55] Speaker 3: You know, it's it's that Cold War era movie. I
[4:58] Speaker 3: don't know how many of you've heard about it, Clint
[5:00] Speaker 3: Eastwood film where CLINTE. Eastwood is smuggled into the Soviet
[5:03] Speaker 3: Union and he steals their newest jet, which is the
[5:07] Speaker 3: mid thirty one. I had that same feeling when Clint
[5:10] Speaker 3: Eastwood actually sees that machine for the first time. You know,
[5:14] Speaker 3: it's like a really menacing looking aircraft, and yere, this
[5:17] Speaker 3: S fifty seven was that that airbase. It's one of
[5:20] Speaker 3: the coolest looking aircraft that I've seen. And you know,
[5:23] Speaker 3: if you remember this movie again, I know a lot
[5:25] Speaker 3: of Hollywood, you know, plugging a lot of Hollywood movies.
[5:29] Speaker 3: There was that Hollywood film that was a sequel to
[5:31] Speaker 3: Independence Day where they had these the Americans flying these
[5:38] Speaker 3: new stealth jet inspired by alien technology. They used the
[5:43] Speaker 3: SOO fifty seven for them simply because that jet looked
[5:46] Speaker 3: so menacing, you know, and all the aircraft had that
[5:50] Speaker 3: have that thing around them, whether it's the sou fifty seven,
[5:52] Speaker 3: or it's the Sooth thirty. I remember seeing the South
[5:55] Speaker 3: thirty for the first time. It looked like a klingon
[5:58] Speaker 3: bird of praise, you know exactly the weight, it's like
[6:00] Speaker 3: hunched down, nose drooping and all that. So Russians, you
[6:04] Speaker 3: have to give it to them. The bomber fleet. I mean,
[6:07] Speaker 3: just look at the TU one forty four, look at
[6:10] Speaker 3: the T one sixty. Uh. They all look so menacing
[6:15] Speaker 3: black jack and all very very They're menacing at the
[6:18] Speaker 3: same time, very elegant. You know that. It's a combination
[6:21] Speaker 3: that's very hard to describe. But for all of you,
[6:25] Speaker 3: you know, fighter buffs, I'm sure a lot of you
[6:26] Speaker 3: agree with this. The Russians designed the most lethal looking egg. Yeah.
[6:33] Speaker 1: In fact, you know, I'm going to show you a
[6:34] Speaker 1: pictures on the band.
[6:35] Speaker 2: I'm going to have my producer show it to our
[6:38] Speaker 2: viewers on YouTube and for our people or who listen
[6:41] Speaker 2: to us an audio. We have a link in the show description.
[6:43] Speaker 2: It's an image from the Chundergird Air Force Museum of
[6:49] Speaker 2: the Bamak and Maha saying the first three women fighter
[6:51] Speaker 2: pilots and it's a lovely, lovely love oh yes.
[6:55] Speaker 3: Yes, of course.
[6:56] Speaker 1: Then in the front of a twentyway it is.
[6:58] Speaker 3: Possibly one of the best photographs I've seen for Make
[7:02] Speaker 3: twenty one with their pilots and all that. You know,
[7:04] Speaker 3: apart from the fact that it's a very big it's
[7:06] Speaker 3: a red letter day for the Air Force. Three Make
[7:08] Speaker 3: twenty one fighter pilots, very beautifully taken photograph. It's it's
[7:13] Speaker 3: everything that the machine is all about, and you have
[7:15] Speaker 3: this new thing. You know, it's like the Air Force
[7:17] Speaker 3: then the Air Force now now it's like spanning. It's
[7:20] Speaker 3: a generation spanning photograph.
[7:23] Speaker 2: And imotually give you to the to the museum over
[7:25] Speaker 2: there because I think this actually is the best poster
[7:27] Speaker 2: they have over there. And when you look at the
[7:31] Speaker 2: history share history of what the Air Force may have
[7:33] Speaker 2: to display it for people over there, and they've managed
[7:35] Speaker 2: to put this post up there, I literally hatstoff to them.
[7:38] Speaker 1: It's a fantastic image.
[7:40] Speaker 2: People should definitely take a look at it, and if
[7:43] Speaker 2: you aren't, undergut would definitely take a look at the
[7:45] Speaker 2: post Into your life speaking of tundygard something before we
[7:49] Speaker 2: actually again go into Make twenty one, they also have
[7:52] Speaker 2: a simulator Make twenty one simulator, so you're talking about
[7:56] Speaker 2: war machines elegance. But I'll tell you something. I sat
[7:59] Speaker 2: in that simulator. That cockpit is damn damn uncomfortable. It
[8:04] Speaker 2: is cramped as hell. There is no place to move
[8:07] Speaker 2: your leg, there is no place, it seems to move
[8:10] Speaker 2: your head.
[8:11] Speaker 3: How the hell do you fly that thing? Good question, Dave.
[8:15] Speaker 3: You know, the first time I saw a Make twenty one,
[8:17] Speaker 3: that is exactly my question. Where do you fit a
[8:19] Speaker 3: pilot into this? You know? The mid twenty one to
[8:22] Speaker 3: me is nothing but a It's an engine with a
[8:26] Speaker 3: pilot strapped onto it, and it's got two wings, right,
[8:29] Speaker 3: it's just made for brute speed, and it's got a radar,
[8:33] Speaker 3: of course, it's got a radar in the nose, thankfully.
[8:36] Speaker 3: And it's like a pilot's trapped to a very fast
[8:39] Speaker 3: flying machine. That's what it is. That's you know, Russian design,
[8:44] Speaker 3: you know philosophy. For you, they first put all the
[8:48] Speaker 3: weapons and the equipment, and then they fit the people
[8:50] Speaker 3: into it. You know, for them, the mission is so important,
[8:53] Speaker 3: right right, it's and it's you know, whether you look
[8:56] Speaker 3: at your T ninety tanks, T seventy two tanks, they're
[8:59] Speaker 3: all like that, extremely cramped, no room for creature, comforts, nothing,
[9:03] Speaker 3: You can barely stretch your legs. Right, it's the The
[9:08] Speaker 3: operators just just fit into those spaces. And it's strange
[9:11] Speaker 3: because I have friends who are like six feet two
[9:16] Speaker 3: and they rail about, you know, the T seventy two
[9:19] Speaker 3: and T ninety tanks. I said, But you know, my
[9:22] Speaker 3: friend can lovers, I said, Bob said, your install has
[9:26] Speaker 3: been how to help you fit inside? Is a tank? Commander?
[9:29] Speaker 3: Is a commander regiment? How do you fit into this?
[9:32] Speaker 3: It says, Oh, I have to tell you. Here's the
[9:33] Speaker 3: best things to say about Russian equipment. You know, whether
[9:36] Speaker 3: it's seventy to ninety and all, I guess it's it just,
[9:40] Speaker 3: you know, grows on you. And you you know, you
[9:43] Speaker 3: don't expect all these things from Western equipment, but you
[9:48] Speaker 3: two from the the Russian equipment. You expect them to
[9:53] Speaker 3: be hardy. You expect it to be uh you know,
[9:56] Speaker 3: uh takes a beating, Uh takes a licking, continuous slicking,
[9:59] Speaker 3: that kind of thing. So they make the most outstanding
[10:03] Speaker 3: war machines. The electronics might not be as robust, but
[10:07] Speaker 3: when it comes to survivability and all that, it's Russian
[10:11] Speaker 3: and Soviet equipment. Yeah yeah, and.
[10:13] Speaker 2: Once again, I mean if people engine they should definitely
[10:16] Speaker 2: try out this similator because that'll give you a very actual,
[10:19] Speaker 2: real experience of what a cockpit of FOR twenty one
[10:22] Speaker 2: is actually like. And I think also that's perhaps where
[10:26] Speaker 2: because you know, back when I was appearing for my
[10:28] Speaker 2: NBA exam and I went for the SSB, I found
[10:30] Speaker 2: out of the Air Force has very strict measurement requirements
[10:34] Speaker 2: for fighter pilot, for people who want to enter the
[10:37] Speaker 2: fighter's team. Your legs have to be a certain length,
[10:40] Speaker 2: your chest has to be so you your tors a
[10:42] Speaker 2: certain length, your height has to be a certain lengths
[10:44] Speaker 2: and stuff like that. I'm just ssing that's where it
[10:46] Speaker 2: comes from. That cockpit, that bloody cockpit is like like
[10:48] Speaker 2: you know, you just have to fit.
[10:49] Speaker 1: Someone over there to exactly all.
[10:53] Speaker 2: Right, So something, let's talk about this jet. Let's talk
[10:57] Speaker 2: about the history of how we ended up getting it.
[11:00] Speaker 2: So at one point India had round more they're not
[11:03] Speaker 2: at one point. Sorry, in real in the sixty two
[11:06] Speaker 2: years of Make twenty one and being in service, we've
[11:08] Speaker 2: had around eight hun seventy five odd MIKE twenty one
[11:11] Speaker 2: that we have had on service.
[11:13] Speaker 1: They've either been built.
[11:14] Speaker 2: Majority of them have been built here in India by
[11:16] Speaker 2: the HL more than six fifty of them. The initial
[11:19] Speaker 2: batch was important from Russia across the world. I think
[11:24] Speaker 2: over eleven thousand of these machines have been made. I
[11:28] Speaker 2: think it's probably the most produced supersonic jet in history,
[11:32] Speaker 2: in history industry, and.
[11:33] Speaker 3: If you count the Chinese variants the F sevens, it
[11:36] Speaker 3: would definitely be the most produced jet in history. Right.
[11:39] Speaker 2: So I want to talk to you something about when
[11:43] Speaker 2: did India decide to go for the mid twenty one
[11:46] Speaker 2: and how did you end up with a situation And
[11:50] Speaker 2: I don't mean that in a bad way, with the
[11:53] Speaker 2: situation where the mid twenty one was your air force,
[11:57] Speaker 2: right because it was the jet you had in the
[12:00] Speaker 2: most numbers. Was it a plan or was it just that,
[12:04] Speaker 2: you know, some things didn't work out. That thing didn't
[12:06] Speaker 2: work out, that tending work out, So you just kept
[12:09] Speaker 2: getting more of the mixed, just like you had to
[12:11] Speaker 2: keep extending its retirement because the pages did.
[12:13] Speaker 3: Not worker for the last time.
[12:14] Speaker 1: Right, So tell us about this on the what's India?
[12:18] Speaker 3: You know? So you've just spoken about the numbers of
[12:22] Speaker 3: the mid twenty one, of course, the largest produced jet
[12:27] Speaker 3: in history, post Cold War era, post Second World War
[12:31] Speaker 3: era jet, a second generation fighter jet. You know, so
[12:35] Speaker 3: the Soviets Spiral development mid fifteen mix seventeen nineteen mid
[12:40] Speaker 3: fifteen is it's not supersonic. The seventeen was at seventeen
[12:45] Speaker 3: or the nineteen was supersonic, and then they modified it.
[12:48] Speaker 3: They brought out the Mike twenty one. They started designing
[12:50] Speaker 3: it in the nineteen fifties, early nineteen fifties, and this
[12:54] Speaker 3: aircraft was like a bullet. It was designed like a bullet.
[12:57] Speaker 3: If you see the sweep of the delta wings and
[13:00] Speaker 3: it has a tail, it's a tailed delta design. Very interesting.
[13:04] Speaker 3: It's designed like a bullet which you fire from the ground.
[13:07] Speaker 3: It goes up and knocks out the bomber fleet and
[13:10] Speaker 3: then comes back. That's it. That's the only thing it
[13:13] Speaker 3: was designed for. It is a high speed, high altitude
[13:16] Speaker 3: interceptor that would take off at very high speed mark
[13:21] Speaker 3: more than mark one, go to forty to fifty thousand
[13:24] Speaker 3: feet and hit the American bombers that were supposed to
[13:29] Speaker 3: invade the Soviet heartline. So a lot of the Soviet
[13:32] Speaker 3: philosophy for the Navy, for the Air Force was about
[13:36] Speaker 3: these high speed combatants, literally hundreds of them that you
[13:39] Speaker 3: could mass produce that would swarm the enemy. And this
[13:43] Speaker 3: is don't forget, Dave. You're just about a decade after
[13:47] Speaker 3: the first Second World War where you've seen thousand bomber
[13:50] Speaker 3: raids over Germany. Literally Germany and Japan had been bombed
[13:54] Speaker 3: into submission. The Soviets feared that they would be next,
[13:58] Speaker 3: and that was what the Cold War was all. So
[14:00] Speaker 3: they designed this aircraft to go very high, very fast,
[14:04] Speaker 3: intercept bombers. And the kind of thinking in those days
[14:08] Speaker 3: is what produced aircraft like the Mid twenty one. And
[14:11] Speaker 3: a couple of years later you had this very revolutionary
[14:13] Speaker 3: aircraft called the Mid twenty five, which pushed the envelope
[14:18] Speaker 3: of the Mike twenty one even further. It was going
[14:20] Speaker 3: at three times the speed of sound, right, And that
[14:24] Speaker 3: was that very famous Cold War thing in the nineteen
[14:28] Speaker 3: seventeen seventy two where a Soviet pilot flew with the
[14:30] Speaker 3: Mid twenty five to Hakodat Airport in Japan. The West
[14:36] Speaker 3: literally pulled that aircraft apart because they wanted to study
[14:38] Speaker 3: it was the most enigmatic aircraft at that time. So
[14:41] Speaker 3: the Soviets did all of these things, and the mid
[14:43] Speaker 3: twenty one was part of that. Now you cut to
[14:46] Speaker 3: South Asia where looking at Pakistan, which is moving closer
[14:51] Speaker 3: towards the west, Seattle sento all of those formations gets
[14:57] Speaker 3: an aircraft called the F one zero four star Fighter,
[15:01] Speaker 3: and that is an aircraft that causes consternation dismay in Delhi. Look,
[15:07] Speaker 3: they've got such an advanced fighter yet a super sonic
[15:09] Speaker 3: aircraft that, you know, the star Fighter. We got to
[15:12] Speaker 3: get something of our own. Now we turn to the
[15:15] Speaker 3: West and they said, oh, you can't get the star Fighter. We'll,
[15:19] Speaker 3: you know, give you this, We'll give you that, but
[15:21] Speaker 3: you know, we can't give you that thing. And so obviously,
[15:23] Speaker 3: I mean the idea is to play one country against
[15:26] Speaker 3: the other. You give one country a thing you have,
[15:29] Speaker 3: the other country want that the singing, you give them
[15:32] Speaker 3: something else. So that's how the you know, arms bazaar works.
[15:36] Speaker 3: So India, in its anxiety to counter the Pakistani acquisitions
[15:41] Speaker 3: of the F one zero four, went to the Soviet Union.
[15:45] Speaker 3: And until then the IF was primarily Western origin aircraft, right,
[15:52] Speaker 3: and this is the first aircraft that they turned to
[15:54] Speaker 3: the Soviet Union for. So if you look at the
[15:56] Speaker 3: building today that you're looking at, the Indoor Russian Strategic Partnership.
[16:02] Speaker 3: If you look at the foundation of that building, there'll
[16:04] Speaker 3: be a couple of blocks. There will be a T
[16:07] Speaker 3: nine T fifty five tank made for the army. There
[16:10] Speaker 3: will be Osa class missile boats and Pettia class warships
[16:16] Speaker 3: for the navy, and Foxtrot class submarines for the navy
[16:19] Speaker 3: and for the air force. It is the Mike twenty one,
[16:21] Speaker 3: the mid twenty three, the mid twenty five, and twenty seven.
[16:24] Speaker 3: So these were those platforms that actually laid the foundation
[16:27] Speaker 3: of the India Russia then the Soviet Union Defense Partnership.
[16:32] Speaker 3: The Russians were open to selling us everything whatever we wanted.
[16:35] Speaker 3: They would, you know, offer it to us. You wanted
[16:37] Speaker 3: a bombers, they'd say, take the Tu twenty two, you
[16:41] Speaker 3: want a fighter, take the twenty one, Take that Make
[16:43] Speaker 3: twenty three. It's of course about you know, creating relationships,
[16:48] Speaker 3: building relationships, you know, influencing that country. And of course
[16:53] Speaker 3: we saw that in nineteen seventy one Indo of Soviet
[16:56] Speaker 3: Peace and Friendship Treaty and all of that. But they
[16:59] Speaker 3: were to offer you the equipment of a standard that
[17:03] Speaker 3: other countries were not giving you. So that's where the
[17:06] Speaker 3: mid twenty one came in. And it was a one
[17:09] Speaker 3: off by, right, It was never planned the numbers that
[17:13] Speaker 3: you just gave. It was never planned to have eight hundred,
[17:16] Speaker 3: nine hundred things. Sounds familiar. You see echoes of that today. Right, Yeah,
[17:21] Speaker 3: it's a one time by. It's a small number. It's
[17:24] Speaker 3: going to be this. We're not going to We're going
[17:26] Speaker 3: to build our road and all that, and before you
[17:28] Speaker 3: know it, it's the camel in the tent. Analogy, right,
[17:32] Speaker 3: the camel poxes nose into the tent and before you
[17:36] Speaker 3: know it, the camera is in the tent, the Arab
[17:38] Speaker 3: is out of it. The Arab here being the indigenous
[17:41] Speaker 3: program now, So it was it was all always about
[17:46] Speaker 3: small numbers, and gradually it kind of got built up
[17:50] Speaker 3: to bigger and bigger numbers as the Cold War progressed
[17:53] Speaker 3: from the nineteen sixties to the nineteen seventies to the eighties.
[17:57] Speaker 3: As the Cold War intensified, we saw that our options
[18:01] Speaker 3: kept getting limited. Our indigenous programs weren't taking off because
[18:05] Speaker 3: of the Maruth, that famous fighter engine problem we developed
[18:10] Speaker 3: with the Maruth. The only other country that was going
[18:13] Speaker 3: to sell us, you know, good, good equipment. Western country
[18:18] Speaker 3: was France, so you had the Mirages coming in in
[18:20] Speaker 3: the eighties and all that. But through the sixties and
[18:22] Speaker 3: the seventies, the Soviet Union was the only country that
[18:25] Speaker 3: would sell you top of the line equipment, military hardware.
[18:29] Speaker 3: And once seventy one happened, where we kind of signaled
[18:32] Speaker 3: that we were closer to the Soviet Union, a lot
[18:35] Speaker 3: of our choices got restricted, right, so we had to
[18:40] Speaker 3: fly a swim or sync with the Soviets. So that's
[18:43] Speaker 3: how the Make twenty one kind of fitted in. And
[18:46] Speaker 3: if you look at the numbers right and the cost,
[18:49] Speaker 3: it is a very cheap aircraft. I mean. So there's
[18:53] Speaker 3: a former chief used to joke with me about the BrahMos.
[18:57] Speaker 3: I used to say when I saw ask him with them,
[19:00] Speaker 3: and he said, oh, the bram was such an expensive missile.
[19:03] Speaker 3: It's like sending a MIK twenty one on a one
[19:04] Speaker 3: way mission. You know, it's the cost of a MIK
[19:07] Speaker 3: twenty one. That's what he would say the mid twenty one,
[19:08] Speaker 3: there by implying it's just cheap aircraft. You could mass
[19:11] Speaker 3: produce it in the hundreds and thousands, and when you
[19:14] Speaker 3: produce them to such numbers you actually brought down the costs, right,
[19:18] Speaker 3: And the Soviets never built anything in small quantities. For them,
[19:22] Speaker 3: it was always numbers. Whether it's your AK forty seven
[19:25] Speaker 3: or it's your Osa class missile boat or your Mick
[19:29] Speaker 3: twenty one. They would build them in the tens of thousands, right.
[19:32] Speaker 3: They would get a design, go to Mark one, mass
[19:36] Speaker 3: produce it, then go to Mark two, three, four, five,
[19:38] Speaker 3: and all them. And so we kind of latched onto that,
[19:41] Speaker 3: you know, the slipstream of the mid twenty one, and
[19:43] Speaker 3: we went from the nineteen sixties sixty one when we
[19:47] Speaker 3: contracted the jets. They arrived in about sixty three, just
[19:49] Speaker 3: after the sixty two war. They saw they didn't see
[19:52] Speaker 3: any engagement in sixty five, but seventy one was their
[19:55] Speaker 3: high mark, and then continued and because you didn't have
[19:58] Speaker 3: an indigenous program, you didn't have any other options. The
[20:02] Speaker 3: mirages were there from France, but they were expensive, so
[20:05] Speaker 3: we kind of stuck to the mid twenty one. So
[20:07] Speaker 3: that's the short story. That's how it became sixty percent
[20:12] Speaker 3: of the air force. At one point in the nineties,
[20:15] Speaker 3: it was a Mike twenty one. If until the sukhoys
[20:19] Speaker 3: came in.
[20:20] Speaker 2: Yes, right, right, So tell me a bit more about
[20:24] Speaker 2: its operational capabilities because the sad part is a lot
[20:28] Speaker 2: of our viewers and listeners from and including me. By
[20:32] Speaker 2: the way, this generation, the only thing we associate with
[20:36] Speaker 2: Mike twenty one is crashes, because that's the phase we
[20:38] Speaker 2: grew up in, right absolutely. So I'm going to come
[20:40] Speaker 2: to that obviously in a bit, but before I go there,
[20:42] Speaker 2: I just want you to talk about the role it
[20:44] Speaker 2: played during seventy one.
[20:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, and drink target as well.
[20:48] Speaker 2: Talk about the fighter jet in terms of its capabilities
[20:51] Speaker 2: in the field of war. What was it able to
[20:53] Speaker 2: do that perhaps other fighter jets were not able to
[20:55] Speaker 2: do well?
[20:57] Speaker 3: The Mike twenty one actually came into its own during
[20:59] Speaker 3: the Nam War, right right. And that's a clue to
[21:03] Speaker 3: one of the questions that you asked about top gun.
[21:07] Speaker 3: And it was an outstanding machine. When the Americans faced
[21:11] Speaker 3: it in battle, they were astounded the way it would climb,
[21:14] Speaker 3: and it had its issues, but it was very fast aircraft.
[21:17] Speaker 3: It would carry air to air missiles, heat seeking missiles,
[21:20] Speaker 3: it had a cannon, all of those things. So for
[21:23] Speaker 3: the role that it was developed, which was basically a
[21:26] Speaker 3: point defense kind of an aircraft. It was an interceptor aircraft.
[21:29] Speaker 3: It did pretty well in that task, and the Indian
[21:32] Speaker 3: Air Force kind of started pushing the envelope with the
[21:35] Speaker 3: Mike twenty one. They acquired it as an air defense aircraft,
[21:38] Speaker 3: as an interceptor aircraft. They went on to make other
[21:42] Speaker 3: variants of the make twenty one, so they converted into
[21:44] Speaker 3: a fighter bomber, They took other variants of it, they
[21:46] Speaker 3: took it to the BIS being the final version that
[21:50] Speaker 3: the Russians designed it in, and then finally we pushed
[21:53] Speaker 3: it even further. So the aircraft that are being retired
[21:56] Speaker 3: today are the by sizes, which is the final version
[22:00] Speaker 3: of the Russian aircraft as modified upgraded by the Indian
[22:04] Speaker 3: Air Force. So we've exploited it in ways that even
[22:09] Speaker 3: the Russians possibly wouldn't have because they had much They
[22:11] Speaker 3: had a very large air force, They had several options.
[22:15] Speaker 3: The mid twenty one was not their mainstay. It was
[22:17] Speaker 3: one of many aircraft that they had that multiple fighter aircraft.
[22:22] Speaker 3: So we've kind of used it in seventy one. Most
[22:25] Speaker 3: outstanding deployment employment of the mid twenty one there is
[22:30] Speaker 3: that very uh, you know, momentous occasion in the fourteenth
[22:36] Speaker 3: of December. If you read, for those of you've read
[22:39] Speaker 3: Brigadier Sidik Salikh's account of the raid on the government
[22:43] Speaker 3: governor's house in Dhaka, there's a very uh, you know,
[22:47] Speaker 3: stirring chapter in which the governor and his cabinet are
[22:51] Speaker 3: meeting uh and the Indian Army is knocking at the
[22:54] Speaker 3: doors of Taka and suddenly the six mik twenty ones
[22:59] Speaker 3: with hunters in a scot they rush past. They do
[23:02] Speaker 3: a gun run. They destroy half the governor's house and
[23:06] Speaker 3: the entire governor's staff. They panic, The governor ducks, the
[23:11] Speaker 3: Governor Mali, he ducks under a table. He resigns. And
[23:16] Speaker 3: so Brigadier Salik is a great eye for detail, and
[23:19] Speaker 3: he says, nobody was hurt, right, but that impact of
[23:24] Speaker 3: being at the receiving end of a supersonic aircraft's gun
[23:28] Speaker 3: run shattered buildings. And he says that you know, there
[23:31] Speaker 3: was an aquarium, a fish tank with goldfish in it.
[23:34] Speaker 3: And he says that I remember seeing the goldfish over
[23:36] Speaker 3: there falling out of the thing. The aquarium had been shattered,
[23:40] Speaker 3: and those goldfish kind of slowly died. And that is
[23:43] Speaker 3: like a metaphor for the military government of East Pakistan.
[23:48] Speaker 3: Right they and two days later, of course, we saw
[23:52] Speaker 3: the largest surrender post the Second World War. So the
[23:55] Speaker 3: mid twenty one played a very small role in that
[23:57] Speaker 3: they did well. They out the F one zero four
[24:02] Speaker 3: star Fighter. And here's the thing. After the seventy one war,
[24:06] Speaker 3: the Pakistan Air Force were very quietly retired the star
[24:09] Speaker 3: Fighter because of they came up against the MIKE twenty one.
[24:13] Speaker 3: They fell shot number of them were shot down, outgunned, outclassed.
[24:18] Speaker 3: Quietly the star Fighters retired and there was a big
[24:23] Speaker 3: vacuum for several years in the path, which was then
[24:27] Speaker 3: filled in as you know famously by the F sixteen
[24:30] Speaker 3: in the late seventies early eighties. So Cargill is where
[24:35] Speaker 3: you actually saw the MIK twenty one, you know, performing
[24:40] Speaker 3: at the limits of its operational envelope. It's not designed
[24:45] Speaker 3: for high altitude warfare. The Air Force tried to use
[24:48] Speaker 3: it for bombing and strifing and escorting and stuff like that,
[24:52] Speaker 3: but it had issues there. So you had that very
[24:54] Speaker 3: famous case of SCOAD leader A Jahoja's aircraft being hit
[25:00] Speaker 3: by a surface to air missile. He was killed in
[25:05] Speaker 3: very very uh, you know, dubious circumstances by the Pakistanis,
[25:11] Speaker 3: and that tells you what they do, how they treat
[25:14] Speaker 3: you know, are captured. But the Big twenty one had
[25:19] Speaker 3: problems there, so which is why the Air Force kind
[25:21] Speaker 3: of then after Cargil they consciously started moving the bombing
[25:26] Speaker 3: duties to other aircraft. So make twenty one, after Cargil
[25:29] Speaker 3: was primarily an interceptor aircraft, point defense what it was
[25:32] Speaker 3: originally designed for. Because by then you already had a
[25:35] Speaker 3: lot of specialist aircraft, fighter bombers, You had Jaguars, you
[25:39] Speaker 3: had Mirages that could do the bombing thing and do
[25:41] Speaker 3: it far more efficiently than the Mike twenty ones. So
[25:44] Speaker 3: make twenty one it from that Cargil thing. And in
[25:49] Speaker 3: the early two thousands, when all those accidents that you described,
[25:53] Speaker 3: it kind of went back to the original rules that
[25:56] Speaker 3: were designed for. And in twenty nineteen Abinan one he
[26:01] Speaker 3: was flying literally a point defense mission. He was steered
[26:04] Speaker 3: by ground control towards these half aircraft that were coming
[26:09] Speaker 3: in at that so it was an interceptor mission that
[26:11] Speaker 3: he was flying where the Air Force says that he's
[26:13] Speaker 3: shot down one park of sixteen. Of course, the Pakistanis
[26:17] Speaker 3: will not admit to that. But it's a good aircraft.
[26:20] Speaker 3: Look at it day, the sixty two years no aircraft
[26:25] Speaker 3: in Indian service this long. I don't even see the
[26:28] Speaker 3: LCA as you know, serving these numbers, six hundred of them,
[26:33] Speaker 3: six hundred eight hundred, accounting for sixty percent of the
[26:38] Speaker 3: you know, air force. That was something that it is
[26:41] Speaker 3: a very unique time place machine kind of movement. Right,
[26:46] Speaker 3: You're not very sure if that kind of thing can
[26:48] Speaker 3: happen once again. So it's done its thing, It's had
[26:52] Speaker 3: its time and it's kind of moved out. I think
[26:55] Speaker 3: we should, you know, respect it for what it did.
[26:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, we definitely should, which is why I want to
[27:00] Speaker 2: talk about this aspect now, especially because both of us
[27:04] Speaker 2: are from the media.
[27:06] Speaker 1: The term that I've read.
[27:08] Speaker 2: Growing up flying coffin for the Make twenty one, and
[27:11] Speaker 2: very incidentally, by the way, you mentioned the F one
[27:13] Speaker 2: of four in response to which we bought the Make
[27:16] Speaker 2: twenty one. Yeah, that also, by the way, has been
[27:18] Speaker 2: called widow maker, not by the Indian media but by foreign.
[27:21] Speaker 3: Media, but the German media. It was an astounding crash
[27:25] Speaker 3: rate where it was in Germany, and it was an
[27:27] Speaker 3: extremely unreliable aircraft. From the German perspective, and it was called,
[27:31] Speaker 3: as you mentioned, the widow Maker in Germany.
[27:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, but the difference being whatever I read online, is
[27:38] Speaker 2: that when it comes to the F one of four,
[27:39] Speaker 2: there is a very healthy acceptance that there were design
[27:44] Speaker 2: flaws with the fighter jet that actually made the crashes happen.
[27:48] Speaker 2: With the makes and you've covered this field for several decades,
[27:52] Speaker 2: now tell us one what actually was the reason for
[27:56] Speaker 2: the crash is because my understanding would be that when
[27:58] Speaker 2: you operate a fighter jets in such large numbers. And
[28:03] Speaker 2: also something that people don't know I think of much
[28:07] Speaker 2: is that the mid twenty one was actually also a
[28:09] Speaker 2: training fighter jet. So almost every Indian Air Force pilot
[28:13] Speaker 2: who graduated from flying school during that period trained on
[28:16] Speaker 2: the mid twenty one before they either moved to other
[28:19] Speaker 2: fighters or they were elevated to actually flying duties.
[28:21] Speaker 1: Right, So if that's.
[28:23] Speaker 2: Also going to be your training jet, I would imagine
[28:25] Speaker 2: the crash ratio to be a bit higher. So one,
[28:28] Speaker 2: as someone in the media, how do you look back
[28:31] Speaker 2: at the time when the media began to be calling
[28:33] Speaker 2: this the flying coffin? And second, what actually happened with
[28:36] Speaker 2: those crashes?
[28:37] Speaker 3: Right? You know, good question there. Now, the thing is
[28:40] Speaker 3: that in the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands,
[28:43] Speaker 3: this is what happened, That you saw a very large
[28:45] Speaker 3: number of mid twenty one crashes. That's a fact because
[28:50] Speaker 3: by then the aircraft was already it was fifty percent
[28:53] Speaker 3: of the Air Force's numbers. And it's just suggests that
[28:59] Speaker 3: the more aircraft that you fly, the more numbers that
[29:01] Speaker 3: you have, it will be that particular type of aircraft
[29:04] Speaker 3: that will crash. And we were losing a lot of
[29:07] Speaker 3: meat twenty ones. But it's not easy to say what
[29:10] Speaker 3: there's no one particular reason for that. It wasn't certainly
[29:13] Speaker 3: a design flaw. I think it was a combination of
[29:17] Speaker 3: several factors. The training aspect that you mentioned is one
[29:21] Speaker 3: of them. It's a very hard to handle aircraft. Whoever
[29:25] Speaker 3: I have spoken to they say that, look, this aircraft
[29:28] Speaker 3: actually taught us a lot about flying. We thought we
[29:31] Speaker 3: were you know, aces and all that, but the military
[29:33] Speaker 3: sat into the cockpit. It had great, you know, handling skills,
[29:38] Speaker 3: but you had to handle it in a certain way
[29:40] Speaker 3: and you had to be very skilled to fly it. Now,
[29:42] Speaker 3: what happened was that we didn't have a jet trainer. Yes,
[29:46] Speaker 3: that was a big, big mistake that we allowed this
[29:51] Speaker 3: gap to open up in the eighties and in the nineties,
[29:53] Speaker 3: the fact that one of the largest air forces in
[29:56] Speaker 3: the world didn't have an advanced jet trainer, so which
[29:59] Speaker 3: means that pilots were going directly from a piston engine
[30:02] Speaker 3: trainer straight away into a fighter jet toropit like a
[30:05] Speaker 3: Mike twenty one, and you were landing. Your landing speeds
[30:09] Speaker 3: were two hundred and fifty three hundred and all that
[30:12] Speaker 3: I mean these are like very high speeds, so a
[30:15] Speaker 3: lot of those crashes happened by the way, when the
[30:18] Speaker 3: aircraft was landing, when it was taking off, those kinds
[30:20] Speaker 3: of things happened. So then also you had the issue
[30:24] Speaker 3: of spare parts. Right after the breakup of the Soviet Union,
[30:28] Speaker 3: there were a number of the mid twenty ones which
[30:31] Speaker 3: we didn't have spares for, so you literally had third
[30:34] Speaker 3: parties selling us spares. That was also an issue, the
[30:38] Speaker 3: fact that your pilots didn't have a good training platform.
[30:41] Speaker 3: They were jumping directly from the turboproper aircraft straightway into
[30:45] Speaker 3: a Mike twenty one trainer and then into a mid
[30:49] Speaker 3: twenty one fighter jet. Combination of factors. That's what led
[30:52] Speaker 3: to the Surgeon accidents. And as many of you remember,
[30:57] Speaker 3: George Fernandez, the Defense Minister, then had to then fly
[31:00] Speaker 3: in a Make twenty one himself to kind of assuage,
[31:04] Speaker 3: you know, people that this aircraft was still safe to fly.
[31:07] Speaker 3: But you know, the interesting thing is that I have
[31:10] Speaker 3: in all of those years, I've written several stories. I've
[31:14] Speaker 3: interviewed the kin of the pilots, some of the very
[31:19] Speaker 3: outstanding pilots that we lost in those crashes, their wives,
[31:23] Speaker 3: their mothers, They were heartbroken and it was really sad
[31:26] Speaker 3: what happened there. I never met any Air Force officer
[31:32] Speaker 3: in any squadron who said this aircraft was unfit to
[31:34] Speaker 3: fly or anything like that. They all had faith in
[31:37] Speaker 3: the machine and its capabilities, because they said, it's as
[31:41] Speaker 3: clear as that if we don't have faith in the machine,
[31:43] Speaker 3: we will not fly it. It was not that the
[31:45] Speaker 3: Air Force had no other option and therefore they were
[31:48] Speaker 3: flying it. That was much later when the fact that
[31:51] Speaker 3: you're flying these machines, which are over three decades old,
[31:55] Speaker 3: you know, well into the twenty twenty fives, points to
[31:59] Speaker 3: a failure of at many levels of planning you're in
[32:02] Speaker 3: an account for the LCA is not coming in the
[32:05] Speaker 3: numbers that they were meant to be. The LC, as
[32:07] Speaker 3: you know, it was meant to replace the Mike twenty
[32:09] Speaker 3: one on a one is to one basis, Right, one
[32:12] Speaker 3: MIK twenty one goes out one LCA. They just flies in.
[32:15] Speaker 3: That didn't happen for various reasons. We didn't have a
[32:18] Speaker 3: plan B. We should clearly have had a plan B.
[32:21] Speaker 3: We didn't. So now it's for us at least in
[32:24] Speaker 3: the short term. In the short term I mean the
[32:28] Speaker 3: next seven, eight, ten years, because any new aircraft that
[32:31] Speaker 3: we contract to buy is not going to come in
[32:33] Speaker 3: the numbers at least for a decade. Right, you have
[32:36] Speaker 3: no option but to go in the lcaight THEES and
[32:39] Speaker 3: I think so, you know, coming back to that question
[32:42] Speaker 3: about those crashes, crashes are there, but if you look
[32:45] Speaker 3: at the overall numbers that they made up sixty to
[32:48] Speaker 3: fifty sixty percent of the air Force, there were many
[32:50] Speaker 3: other MiGs that were crashing as well. Mike twenty three
[32:54] Speaker 3: crashes were there, Twenty sevens also were crashing. The common
[32:59] Speaker 3: thing that oh, MiGs are unsafe, you know, every every
[33:02] Speaker 3: make that crash became a make twenty one. That's how
[33:05] Speaker 3: it was. But you know, I think a lot of
[33:09] Speaker 3: lessons have been learned since then, and of course the
[33:12] Speaker 3: advanced jet trainer came in. Yes, it's been what seventeen
[33:15] Speaker 3: years in service now, seventeen or eighteen years, but these
[33:19] Speaker 3: I mean, I'm saying that not one pilot should have
[33:22] Speaker 3: been lost, and it was really sad what happened. And
[33:25] Speaker 3: I think the Air Force has learned its lessons since then,
[33:28] Speaker 3: and we possibly will never see, you know, that that
[33:32] Speaker 3: kind of rate of accidents because fighter file, you know,
[33:36] Speaker 3: fighter flying itself has changed now, yes, and that was
[33:41] Speaker 3: a dark phase.
[33:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, and your take on someone from within the media
[33:46] Speaker 2: when you would remember back then what Peter did with
[33:48] Speaker 2: the label, I think.
[33:49] Speaker 3: That labeling of that aircraft was unfortunate. We should never
[33:54] Speaker 3: have called it that because I mean, you know, it's
[33:58] Speaker 3: a good headline to give for the moment, you know,
[34:02] Speaker 3: widow maker. We you know, it wasn't even an original one.
[34:05] Speaker 3: It was a it was a cut paste from a
[34:07] Speaker 3: foreign thing. The F one zero four coffin flying coffin
[34:12] Speaker 3: and all of that, and that gave it a bad rap.
[34:14] Speaker 3: And basically it kind of undermined the pilots were flying
[34:19] Speaker 3: that aircraft. You know, can you imagine the kind of
[34:23] Speaker 3: angst I've been that the families would have been going through,
[34:27] Speaker 3: you know, for an Air Force pilot who was posted
[34:29] Speaker 3: in Make twenty one s Gordon and you come out
[34:32] Speaker 3: every day with stories like this to say that, oh,
[34:36] Speaker 3: you know, the Air Force is flying flying coffins and
[34:39] Speaker 3: these are widow makers and you know, so many people
[34:41] Speaker 3: have died, so many pilots had died. But you know,
[34:45] Speaker 3: I think the media should have been a little more
[34:48] Speaker 3: careful in the kind of language that we chose to
[34:54] Speaker 3: put out the kind of stories that we did in
[34:56] Speaker 3: the early two thousands. There was, of course a popular
[34:59] Speaker 3: movie as well. I remember in two thousand and five
[35:02] Speaker 3: was a the Amir Kanfin which actually had a big
[35:04] Speaker 3: twenty one, which spoke of yes, yes, yes, so it
[35:10] Speaker 3: was it Actually it got the popular imagination as well.
[35:13] Speaker 3: So when all of this kind of came in, I
[35:15] Speaker 3: think the Air Force was under a lot of pressure.
[35:18] Speaker 3: And even now, you know that those injuries are still
[35:23] Speaker 3: quite raw, those memories are still very fresh.
[35:26] Speaker 1: Right, we'll talk more about this, but a truck quick break.
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[36:18] Speaker 2: Welcome back, Sandeep and I have been discussing the Make
[36:20] Speaker 2: twenty one history in the Force and its capabilities and
[36:25] Speaker 2: how we're a period of time sort of started getting
[36:27] Speaker 2: old and reached a point where it had to be retired,
[36:31] Speaker 2: like you would do with any piece of technology, any
[36:34] Speaker 2: piece of equipment. But then there Force had to keep
[36:37] Speaker 2: holding on to it because the replacements, which was the
[36:40] Speaker 2: light combat aircraft, they just never came on. Time still
[36:43] Speaker 2: hasn't by there with the Mark one. At least the
[36:45] Speaker 2: Mark one is in service and two squadrons, but the
[36:47] Speaker 2: Mark one is supposed to still come by the end
[36:49] Speaker 2: of this year the first deliveries. But how old is
[36:56] Speaker 2: the meg Sandeep that is being retired this morning. So
[37:00] Speaker 2: the mid twenty one, like you said before the break,
[37:02] Speaker 2: is this is the Bison version of it. So I
[37:04] Speaker 2: want to talk about from the first one that we began,
[37:08] Speaker 2: this pot this this episode, the second generation fighter that
[37:11] Speaker 2: you said we put it from Russia and response to
[37:13] Speaker 2: Pakistan buying the F one zero force, where have we
[37:17] Speaker 2: come in terms of upgrading and improving the Meg? Is
[37:20] Speaker 2: the cockpit by they were still as cramped as the
[37:22] Speaker 2: one I stats Hatten in the Chandikad Air Force Museum.
[37:26] Speaker 1: Have the ivonis improved? Is it easier to see outside?
[37:29] Speaker 2: Because one thing I forgot to mention when I was
[37:31] Speaker 2: talking about it, it is just full of dials, man Like,
[37:34] Speaker 2: it's just green and dial. When you're flying that fast,
[37:38] Speaker 2: how the hell does it pilot? No? But anyway, so
[37:41] Speaker 2: how has the MEG evolved the Indian MiG twenty one
[37:45] Speaker 2: to the point that it was able to face off
[37:49] Speaker 2: against advanced Pakistani fighter jets in twenty nineteen post Bala
[37:53] Speaker 2: Code when the dog fight and famous dog fight happened
[37:55] Speaker 2: and you had then being command Rabin and Bartaman shooting
[37:58] Speaker 2: down one Pakistani fighter jet. I'm going to talk about
[38:01] Speaker 2: that controversy also. But before that, yes, the evolution of
[38:04] Speaker 2: the MIKE twenty one.
[38:05] Speaker 3: Well, so the Mike twenty ones that are being retired.
[38:07] Speaker 3: The last two squadns of the IAAF that are being
[38:10] Speaker 3: retired are the Bison standard, which is a modification of
[38:14] Speaker 3: the mid twenty one BIS, which was the last evolution
[38:18] Speaker 3: of the MIC that the Russians had produced. And we
[38:21] Speaker 3: of course had produced the BIS in large numbers for
[38:24] Speaker 3: about two decades at right up to nineteen eighty eight
[38:28] Speaker 3: if I remember correctly, because the production run ended in
[38:31] Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, late eighties. So the aircraft that are
[38:35] Speaker 3: being retired now would be about three decades thirty five
[38:38] Speaker 3: years old. Thirty thirty five years old. And I've actually
[38:40] Speaker 3: seen some of these aircraft in Jodhpur during exercise and
[38:44] Speaker 3: they look pretty beat up. You know, they look like
[38:47] Speaker 3: old cars a bit. You know, you can see the
[38:49] Speaker 3: thing the age is showing, right. So the Air Force
[38:53] Speaker 3: has taken the decision to retire it. They've probably done
[38:56] Speaker 3: a cost benefit analysis even at a time it's acceptable
[39:01] Speaker 3: for them to go down to twenty nine scadons. It's
[39:03] Speaker 3: a very brave decision that they've taken to retire from
[39:06] Speaker 3: to go from thirty one to twenty nine. It's a
[39:10] Speaker 3: psychological thing that you're looking at the smallest Indian Air
[39:13] Speaker 3: Force since the nineteen sixty two war with China, right,
[39:17] Speaker 3: that is a big, big thing that they've chosen to
[39:22] Speaker 3: go with, possibly to make their case also for more
[39:27] Speaker 3: fighter aircraft. Of course, there's no doubt that the Air
[39:29] Speaker 3: Force needs more fighter aircraft, you know, whether it comes
[39:32] Speaker 3: from indigenous sources or from imports, or a combination of both,
[39:37] Speaker 3: maybe a third line, a third source as well. So
[39:40] Speaker 3: they're looking at all of these permutations combinations. But yes,
[39:43] Speaker 3: the fighters that are being retired, the last two scadons
[39:46] Speaker 3: thirty thirty five years old. These are the biz which
[39:50] Speaker 3: became the Bison, and the Bison was a very very
[39:53] Speaker 3: good project that the Indian Air Force did in collaboration
[39:57] Speaker 3: with Russia. It was the ninety three. It was called
[40:01] Speaker 3: the ninety three, which I think it had to do
[40:03] Speaker 3: with the a the year in which this upgrade began
[40:07] Speaker 3: in Russia. It took a couple of years. It was
[40:09] Speaker 3: about one twenty five or one twenty six fighter jets complete,
[40:15] Speaker 3: about literally about six squadons worth. The last last batch
[40:19] Speaker 3: of what five six coadrons of bis were upgraded to
[40:22] Speaker 3: the Bison standard and they did pretty well. A lot
[40:25] Speaker 3: of those dials that you saw in the older mix
[40:27] Speaker 3: were replaced by I think it was about three or
[40:30] Speaker 3: four digital displays there. So they had a very good radar,
[40:34] Speaker 3: the phasotroncopio, the Russian radar. It had beyond visual range missiles.
[40:40] Speaker 3: It had some very very significant upgrades that could bring it.
[40:44] Speaker 3: So the Make twenty one is a second generation fighter aircraft.
[40:47] Speaker 3: This one, the Bison became a proper third generation aircraft, right,
[40:51] Speaker 3: which gave some scares to American aircraft also in exercises
[40:55] Speaker 3: because very small cross sections rcs. It would come in
[41:00] Speaker 3: very quickly, it would pick up and you know, shoot
[41:03] Speaker 3: missiles beyond visual range, those kinds of things. So it
[41:05] Speaker 3: had a couple of good, you know, design features. But again,
[41:10] Speaker 3: you know, I was thinking that maybe this is something
[41:12] Speaker 3: that we should have worked on again in the eighties
[41:15] Speaker 3: and it should have continued upgrading it possibly made a
[41:18] Speaker 3: new variant of the mid twenty one as well, locally produced.
[41:22] Speaker 3: That would have been a very interesting second line to
[41:27] Speaker 3: the LCA stages. But of course we're clutching at Strawsier
[41:33] Speaker 3: it's like, you know, what if what if we could
[41:35] Speaker 3: have done this, we could have done that HF twenty four.
[41:38] Speaker 3: So you know, we're looking at twenty twenty five because
[41:41] Speaker 3: the numbers are shrunk. We're looking at this rear view mirror,
[41:44] Speaker 3: and our rearview mirror, unfortunately, is becoming bigger as we
[41:48] Speaker 3: look at the kind of decisions that weren't taken, the
[41:51] Speaker 3: choices that weren't made, which is why we are today
[41:55] Speaker 3: where we are with the numbers that we have. Of course,
[41:57] Speaker 3: the MIK twenty one, they could have used it better
[42:00] Speaker 3: done what the Chinese did as well. You know, the
[42:02] Speaker 3: Chinese of course produced the Make twenty one as the
[42:05] Speaker 3: the F seven. They kept on modernizing it, modifying it,
[42:09] Speaker 3: and you see a lot of the DNA of the
[42:13] Speaker 3: MIKE twenty one and the Sukhoi is in the present
[42:15] Speaker 3: generation of you know, J thirty five fighters, fifth generation
[42:21] Speaker 3: fighters of the Chinese have produced because you know, for them,
[42:24] Speaker 3: it's again we come back to that thing of spiral development.
[42:27] Speaker 3: You know, take a design, keep modernizing and improving it,
[42:30] Speaker 3: Mark one, Mark two, Mark three. You never lose sight
[42:33] Speaker 3: of that that line, you know, you don't get distracted.
[42:36] Speaker 3: You don't go here, there and all, which is what
[42:38] Speaker 3: the Chinese have done and which is ideally what we
[42:41] Speaker 3: should have done as well. But in short, make twenty
[42:46] Speaker 3: one great aircraft seen it's time and the Bison doesn't
[42:50] Speaker 3: look like what the bis and I think what is
[42:53] Speaker 3: the type seventy seven that I think? So one of
[42:56] Speaker 3: the older aircrowd over? Yeah, yeah right.
[42:59] Speaker 2: So one more point on the twenty nineteen dog fight
[43:02] Speaker 2: where the mid twenty one was able to stand up
[43:04] Speaker 2: to advanced for Pakistani sets, and this is from the
[43:07] Speaker 2: producer Tanya. It's a fantastic question I felt, is that
[43:11] Speaker 2: she wants to know whether the fact that you're going
[43:16] Speaker 2: to be taking off scrambling on a fighter jet that's
[43:19] Speaker 2: pretty old and facing off against the enemy who has
[43:23] Speaker 2: arguably had more advanced fighters than you would that player
[43:26] Speaker 2: of pilot's mind, even though that pilot is very confident
[43:29] Speaker 2: of its fighter jet, because like you've said, the Air
[43:31] Speaker 2: Force and Air Force pilots have never said anything bad
[43:34] Speaker 2: about the jet. They were always very confident about it.
[43:36] Speaker 2: But still, this is a live, almost.
[43:39] Speaker 1: War like scenario.
[43:40] Speaker 2: There is a portential of a dogfight. The dock fed
[43:42] Speaker 2: did happen? Two jets were taken down. One was Indian
[43:45] Speaker 2: and one was Pakistani. So does that player a fight
[43:48] Speaker 2: a fighter pilot's mind care.
[43:52] Speaker 3: Well, you know, I don't think a would ever have
[43:56] Speaker 3: had that thought when he took off. When he was
[43:59] Speaker 3: ordered it was it was a ground based he was
[44:02] Speaker 3: underground control and he was asked to intercept this flock
[44:06] Speaker 3: of path jets that came in, and they did. They
[44:09] Speaker 3: dropped some ordnance and they went back and he was
[44:11] Speaker 3: in pursuit. It was that typical dogfight as we understand it.
[44:15] Speaker 3: You know, it was classic. He picked up those jets,
[44:19] Speaker 3: he fired a missile, they fired a missile. They got
[44:21] Speaker 3: him at a longer range because of the am Ram
[44:24] Speaker 3: that he has. And I think the problem there was
[44:26] Speaker 3: that we didn't quite realize they how deadly the am
[44:30] Speaker 3: ram was. We saw that thing, you know, in two
[44:33] Speaker 3: thousand and five, those acquisitions, the large numbers of them,
[44:36] Speaker 3: were bought incidentally by the Pakistan Air Force from the Americans.
[44:41] Speaker 3: I remember laughing about it that, you know, they bought
[44:44] Speaker 3: it as part of the War on Terror kind of
[44:47] Speaker 3: special funds that they got, and it said, the Taliban
[44:50] Speaker 3: don't have fighter jets, so who are they, you know,
[44:53] Speaker 3: using the ambrames against and it's very clearly it was
[44:56] Speaker 3: the Indian Air Force, because you know, the Pakistan Air
[44:59] Speaker 3: Force has no no other mission but to take down
[45:03] Speaker 3: Indian Air Force jets. There is nothing else they want
[45:05] Speaker 3: to do. They don't even want to support the Park Army.
[45:09] Speaker 3: They certainly don't want to take on the Indian Navy.
[45:12] Speaker 3: They only exist to take down the Indian Air Force
[45:15] Speaker 3: fighter jets. It's a it's a kind of a gladiatorial
[45:18] Speaker 3: mindset that they've brought in and to an extent that
[45:22] Speaker 3: you know, today you're looking at several PAF air bases
[45:25] Speaker 3: that have been hold and shattered and all that where
[45:28] Speaker 3: able to fly these jets from, you know, in conflict.
[45:30] Speaker 3: I would be very worried if I were a path chief,
[45:33] Speaker 3: because if in thirty minutes you can push button BrahMos
[45:37] Speaker 3: missiles and you know, destroy your air bases, I'd be
[45:40] Speaker 3: really worried. I my fighter jets aren't made to operate
[45:44] Speaker 3: off highways, and you can do that for a while, right,
[45:46] Speaker 3: not in any large number to cause concern to the
[45:51] Speaker 3: Indian AIRFCE. But you know the thing is that back
[45:53] Speaker 3: to Balacote, he was jammed, His comms were jammed, that's
[45:58] Speaker 3: what we understand. And he was hit by a very
[46:02] Speaker 3: capable American missile and that's what happened. That we didn't
[46:05] Speaker 3: factor in the fact that you could be hit by
[46:07] Speaker 3: an Amram and that's what exactly happened. That maybe this
[46:12] Speaker 3: was one engagement in which the Pakistan Air Force had
[46:16] Speaker 3: an edge because a of numbers and b because of
[46:18] Speaker 3: that one particular system that we didn't take into account, right,
[46:22] Speaker 3: and which is what is actually made up the case
[46:25] Speaker 3: for the Raphael, which is why we went in for
[46:27] Speaker 3: the raphile in the numbers, and which is why the
[46:30] Speaker 3: air force today seems to be very focused on getting
[46:34] Speaker 3: one hundred and fourteen more at very large costs.
[46:38] Speaker 2: It must be said, because I'm guessing one learning and
[46:41] Speaker 2: guessing from there. Then also is the importance of electronic
[46:44] Speaker 2: warfare block fights, which is what you said happened with
[46:47] Speaker 2: the being jammed. So I think at one point is
[46:49] Speaker 2: what report say that he was not able to hear
[46:52] Speaker 2: the ground control telling him turned back, you are kind
[46:55] Speaker 2: of about to cross the eloc and then that actually
[46:57] Speaker 2: happened and.
[46:58] Speaker 3: And he went into the other side that you know,
[47:00] Speaker 3: and you know very quick aside. I'll take a minute day.
[47:03] Speaker 3: One of the greatest upgrades in fact of the MIKE
[47:07] Speaker 3: twenty one. I was talked to my Air Force historian
[47:11] Speaker 3: friend a couple of days back by Marshall supermannium you're
[47:13] Speaker 3: telling me the greatest innovation. He called it jugad. It's
[47:17] Speaker 3: not a what I like the force. You know. One
[47:21] Speaker 3: of the greatest upgrades that the Indian Air Force did
[47:23] Speaker 3: on the mid twenty one was the e W version.
[47:27] Speaker 3: They had a dedicated e W squadron I think it
[47:30] Speaker 3: was thirty five or something thirty five squadon which was
[47:34] Speaker 3: upgraded by the Indian Air Force in the late seventies
[47:38] Speaker 3: in collaboration with Dado. And this was a Swedish e
[47:42] Speaker 3: W system. It was a podded e W system called Chatterbox.
[47:46] Speaker 3: Interesting name, so the chatterbox was used in that squadron.
[47:50] Speaker 3: It had I think three tanks for extended ranges and
[47:56] Speaker 3: it had the e W pods and MIKE twenty ones
[47:59] Speaker 3: in the Ler Squadan, so called growler'squadon would escort the
[48:03] Speaker 3: Indian fighter bombers like the Canberras and the the Hunters
[48:07] Speaker 3: and later the Jaguars as well, and they were operating
[48:11] Speaker 3: at the very limits of their envelope. So that was
[48:15] Speaker 3: the most interesting upgrade e W Mike twenty one. And
[48:19] Speaker 3: you know, I believe that we've not paid enough attention
[48:22] Speaker 3: to electronic warfare in the air force. Like the US
[48:25] Speaker 3: Air Force for instance, has dedicated electronic warfare squadents. We
[48:29] Speaker 3: haven't invested in that kind of you know, overarching e
[48:33] Speaker 3: W capabilities for us. It was like something that oh,
[48:36] Speaker 3: you know, you have a Mirage, Mirage will also do
[48:38] Speaker 3: e W. Sukhois will also do e W. That kind
[48:41] Speaker 3: of you know, like a multi roll kind of thing.
[48:44] Speaker 3: To have a dedicated set of e W aircraft that
[48:47] Speaker 3: was something that MIK twenty one did briefly interesting.
[48:51] Speaker 2: So on the on the post Placod dog fight, the
[48:55] Speaker 2: controversial bid and because I'm never going to get a
[48:59] Speaker 2: chance to a four lepisto on that that one question,
[49:01] Speaker 2: so I'm just going to use this opportunity to.
[49:03] Speaker 1: Ask that tangent.
[49:04] Speaker 2: And it's something that's going to be like, you know,
[49:07] Speaker 2: your analysis and your feeling of it. The in AFO
[49:10] Speaker 2: says that Abananda was also able to shoot down on
[49:12] Speaker 2: F sixteen of the Pakistani airfos the wise chief if
[49:17] Speaker 2: I'm not wrong, but the three services. Wise chiefs displayed
[49:20] Speaker 2: some parts of the of the debris that they said
[49:22] Speaker 2: beyond to the F sixteen. Pakistan obviously has not acknowledged that.
[49:25] Speaker 2: Initially Pakistan said two pilots, but down then revised that
[49:28] Speaker 2: to one that in famous press conference by Asika fur So,
[49:32] Speaker 2: there is there is quite a lot of evidence that
[49:34] Speaker 2: one Pakistani jet did go down, but the question being
[49:38] Speaker 2: wasn't in F sixteen because that's a big psychological blow
[49:40] Speaker 2: right now. A guest the previous season of In her
[49:43] Speaker 2: Defense had said, putting his neck outs, had said that
[49:46] Speaker 2: he believes it was actually a GF seventeen of the Chinese,
[49:50] Speaker 2: of the Chinese GF seventeen, not actually the F sixteen,
[49:52] Speaker 2: for the simplest reason that Pakistan would not not risk
[49:56] Speaker 2: having the F sixteen so close to Indian fighters. Knows
[50:00] Speaker 2: what actually happened that day. The people who know will
[50:02] Speaker 2: probably never see it for the next few years. They'll
[50:04] Speaker 2: probably see it much later. Your analysis and your theory
[50:08] Speaker 2: on this point.
[50:09] Speaker 3: Well, I think it was one jet did definitely go
[50:11] Speaker 3: down on the Pakistani side, And you know, like you said,
[50:15] Speaker 3: it's not possibly it's not a F sixteen because there
[50:19] Speaker 3: were no Martin bit Baker ejections that day, right, and
[50:24] Speaker 3: certainly not on our sid because the MEEK twenty one
[50:25] Speaker 3: that Abinan then ejected from used a Russian ejection seat,
[50:28] Speaker 3: so there was no ejection on the other side, which
[50:31] Speaker 3: leads one to believe that, yes, possibly it was a
[50:33] Speaker 3: JF seventeen that went down. Something did go down, and
[50:36] Speaker 3: there is a story which says that the pilot was
[50:39] Speaker 3: that pilot had rejected. There was there was some speculation
[50:41] Speaker 3: with the pilot being captured and beaten and killed by
[50:46] Speaker 3: the you know, the Pakistani crowds that captured him, and
[50:49] Speaker 3: you know, all of those stories were there. But the
[50:51] Speaker 3: two pilot theory, based on the parachutes that still stands.
[50:55] Speaker 3: So who knows. The truth will come out. How many
[50:58] Speaker 3: aircraft did Pakistan lose during ob Sindur on the ground
[51:03] Speaker 3: and in the air, on the ground and in the Yeah,
[51:05] Speaker 3: I think that there'd be a lot of you know,
[51:08] Speaker 3: money that should be put on that that those wagers.
[51:13] Speaker 3: It'll take a couple of years, but the truth will emerge.
[51:16] Speaker 2: I mean, we have more than three months after opresations
[51:18] Speaker 2: through one of the Pakistani airs is still out of commission.
[51:21] Speaker 2: By the way, they keep extending that Noteme saying that
[51:23] Speaker 2: runway is not operational.
[51:25] Speaker 3: It took Pakistan for ten years to acknowledge the Northern
[51:28] Speaker 3: Light Infantry were there in Cargil fighting. You know, we
[51:31] Speaker 3: got to know only when Pervez Mushaff actually wrote his
[51:34] Speaker 3: autobios where he said, yes, then I was there. Yes,
[51:38] Speaker 3: we lost so many of our soldiers and you know,
[51:39] Speaker 3: and they refuse to take their bodies back because that
[51:42] Speaker 3: would mean acknowledging that they were Pakistani soldiers. But I
[51:45] Speaker 3: how Pakistan's always fought since nineteen forty seven, right, right.
[51:50] Speaker 2: Right, So the last question on this point on this
[51:53] Speaker 2: topic the legacy of the Make twenty one one. The
[51:56] Speaker 2: personal legacy for you as a reporter who's covered this
[52:00] Speaker 2: for several years. When you will see those images of
[52:04] Speaker 2: the Make twenty one taking off from Tannad Air Force
[52:06] Speaker 2: Base this morning, what's your lasting memory of the Make
[52:10] Speaker 2: twenty one. And second, the legacy for the Air Force
[52:14] Speaker 2: and India in general, because when you have a jet
[52:17] Speaker 2: that's been a majority of your fleet for so long, Yeah,
[52:22] Speaker 2: a jet that's been your third stage fighter trainer, so
[52:26] Speaker 2: your your generations of pilots have grown up and have
[52:31] Speaker 2: trained on this so it obviously affects the character of
[52:35] Speaker 2: Air Force, I would imagine, right, so the legacy that
[52:38] Speaker 2: it leaves on the Air force as well.
[52:39] Speaker 1: And where do we go from here?
[52:41] Speaker 3: Right? Good, good question. They've so my first trust with
[52:44] Speaker 3: the Make twenty one child growing up in the seventies,
[52:48] Speaker 3: father was in the forces is the Navy, and he
[52:51] Speaker 3: came back with this beautiful little brochure of the nineteen
[52:53] Speaker 3: seventy one War. It was called the Story of Defense,
[52:56] Speaker 3: produced by the Defense Ministry, and there was one picture
[52:59] Speaker 3: in that of an aircraft and it was the most
[53:03] Speaker 3: amazing photograph I'd ever seen. It was a black and
[53:05] Speaker 3: white photograph of a MIK twenty one in tiger stripe camouflage.
[53:11] Speaker 3: And I later discovered that this was an aircraft that
[53:14] Speaker 3: was deployed on the in Uttarlai, I think it was
[53:16] Speaker 3: on the Western Front in the seventy one War. And
[53:19] Speaker 3: believe it or not, you can see that same aircraft
[53:21] Speaker 3: in the same tiger stripe camouflage paint at the palam
[53:25] Speaker 3: Air Force Museum. I just discovered that. It's incredible. So
[53:28] Speaker 3: that was the first twist. And then of course there
[53:31] Speaker 3: was a naval pilot who had actually flown the Mik
[53:35] Speaker 3: twenty one in the seventies. So I remember my father
[53:38] Speaker 3: introducing me to him. It was Commander McAdden and I said,
[53:41] Speaker 3: you remember that aircraft that you saw in that book,
[53:43] Speaker 3: the MIK twenty one. I said, yes, she's the man
[53:45] Speaker 3: who flew it. So I was like, so that was
[53:48] Speaker 3: my first big Mike twenty one thing. And of course
[53:51] Speaker 3: later in while we were reporting, we saw the Mike
[53:53] Speaker 3: twenty one, but it was closer to the time that
[53:56] Speaker 3: it was exiting, you know, the air and I think
[54:01] Speaker 3: the Air Force. It's left a big imprint on the
[54:04] Speaker 3: Indian Air Force in a way that possibly no other
[54:07] Speaker 3: machine will simply because of the numbers. You know, if
[54:10] Speaker 3: we're going to operate something in the six hundred seven hundred,
[54:13] Speaker 3: eight hundred's sixty percent of air force, it will leave
[54:17] Speaker 3: a certain kind of imprint on the pilots who flight.
[54:21] Speaker 3: And I think it has kind of helped the Indian
[54:24] Speaker 3: Air Force also, if you look at it, segue into
[54:26] Speaker 3: a lot of Russian equipment very easily, so that they're
[54:31] Speaker 3: all the same family. So you know, if you ask
[54:33] Speaker 3: a Mike twenty one pilot who's then gone on. And
[54:35] Speaker 3: I was speaking to m Marshall massan Make twenty one
[54:39] Speaker 3: pilot instructor. He's trained Iraqi pilots as well. He said,
[54:42] Speaker 3: you know, when I he always wanted to fly a
[54:45] Speaker 3: Make twenty one, but he ended up, you know, in
[54:48] Speaker 3: a Hunter's Gordon in the seventy one war. Then he said,
[54:50] Speaker 3: I want to fly a super soning. They put him
[54:52] Speaker 3: in the Sukhoi seven. So, but finally came into the
[54:55] Speaker 3: Mike twenty one, and he is nothing but praise for
[54:57] Speaker 3: the Make twenty one, and he says that, you know,
[54:59] Speaker 3: it is such a demanding machine, but it actually taught
[55:02] Speaker 3: me a lot about flying, you know, so you had
[55:04] Speaker 3: to be a really skilled kind of a pilot to
[55:07] Speaker 3: fly that machine, like the Mike twenty one. So it's
[55:11] Speaker 3: it's in terms of legend, I don't think there's going
[55:16] Speaker 3: to be any aircraft like the Mike twenty one. Ever.
[55:19] Speaker 3: I don't even see the two thirty approaching those standards.
[55:23] Speaker 3: Possibly the Mirage simply because of its longevity. You know,
[55:27] Speaker 3: it's been in service for four decades. It will continue
[55:30] Speaker 3: for another ten, maybe fifteen years more. But the Mike
[55:35] Speaker 3: twenty one imprint is very unique, and you know, it's
[55:38] Speaker 3: it's not just about a machine. It's about a relationship
[55:42] Speaker 3: that you had with the country. It's a lot of geopolitics,
[55:46] Speaker 3: it's you know, heartbreak, a lot of heartbreak. Like we
[55:51] Speaker 3: were talking about this, you know, losing pilots. That's the
[55:54] Speaker 3: worst thing that can happen, you know, losing pilots. And
[55:57] Speaker 3: that's one good thing about Obsindoor. While the Air Force
[56:02] Speaker 3: did acknowledge that it lost machines, not one Indian pilot
[56:06] Speaker 3: was lost. And for me, that's the most important thing.
[56:09] Speaker 3: Machines can come and go right, but for me, it
[56:13] Speaker 3: is the life of an Air Force officer, the pilot
[56:17] Speaker 3: that's the most precious to me. And of course, the
[56:20] Speaker 3: Big twenty one, by virtue of its legacy in the
[56:24] Speaker 3: Indian Air Force, that's going to continue. It is going
[56:27] Speaker 3: to be unmatched. And here's the thing. A couple of
[56:32] Speaker 3: years back, there was a proposal for the Indian Air
[56:36] Speaker 3: Force to gift its last remaining MIKE twenty ones to
[56:40] Speaker 3: the Russian Air Force. Right now, this is the interesting thing.
[56:44] Speaker 3: The Russian Air Force has never operated MIKE twenty one.
[56:47] Speaker 3: It's the Soviet Air Force that operated and retired them.
[56:51] Speaker 3: So here was you know, India kind of giving back
[56:54] Speaker 3: one of its machines. I think it was a plan
[56:57] Speaker 3: for three machines, and it was supposed to be a
[57:00] Speaker 3: big Indo Russian event that planned a simultaneous this thing
[57:04] Speaker 3: and put In. When prison Putin came here, he was
[57:07] Speaker 3: supposed to be gifted that machine. I don't know what
[57:09] Speaker 3: happened now that you know, it's quite possible it might
[57:13] Speaker 3: happen even in twenty twenty five years. He's due to
[57:16] Speaker 3: visit in November or December for a summit level.
[57:19] Speaker 1: You have thirty six twenty right now, Yeah, yeah, you.
[57:22] Speaker 3: Have a couple you can spare, and I'm sure Russians
[57:24] Speaker 3: would very happily, you know, acknowledge it. But it would
[57:27] Speaker 3: make a very fine gift to give the last few
[57:32] Speaker 3: flight worthy make twenty one Bisons, again upgraded with Russian assistance,
[57:37] Speaker 3: back to the Russian Air Force. I'm sure they appreciate that.
[57:40] Speaker 2: Gift very much, which I think makes a circle back
[57:44] Speaker 2: to the two point number one of what we began
[57:47] Speaker 2: is that the character of Russian war machines. And once
[57:51] Speaker 2: again on a previous season, one of the guests said
[57:54] Speaker 2: that whenever they were indo US or indo Western Air Force,
[58:03] Speaker 2: the Western pilots always wanted to take a look at
[58:06] Speaker 2: the MC twenty one as close as possible.
[58:07] Speaker 1: They always were very fascinated by.
[58:09] Speaker 3: The by the bison and bison yeah yeah.
[58:11] Speaker 1: Right right.
[58:13] Speaker 2: So I think we'll ended there and some trivia time,
[58:17] Speaker 2: and before we answer the question we began at the
[58:19] Speaker 2: start of this episode, the biggest trivia question for me
[58:22] Speaker 2: right now, what happens to the thirty six mconium bisons
[58:25] Speaker 2: that we have now well thirty six.
[58:28] Speaker 3: A lot of them are going to museums. They'd by
[58:32] Speaker 3: gate guardians, and I imagine the Air Force Historic flight
[58:38] Speaker 3: which has a couple of machines. It has the Dakota
[58:41] Speaker 3: which Raji chansa shaker. The politician has gifted them. It's
[58:45] Speaker 3: probably the only time that a politician has gifted anything
[58:48] Speaker 3: back to the military. You know, it's a very commendable gesture.
[58:52] Speaker 3: So you would probably see the MAKE twenty one flying
[58:54] Speaker 3: into the Indian Air Force service in that a few
[59:00] Speaker 3: machines will keep flying and you know, like I mentioned,
[59:03] Speaker 3: quite possible. You never know, we could actually you know,
[59:07] Speaker 3: gift it back to the Russian Federation. So all of
[59:12] Speaker 3: them will be there in some form or the other.
[59:13] Speaker 3: They will be around us. They will always remind us
[59:16] Speaker 3: of the sixty two years of service that the mid
[59:19] Speaker 3: twenty one gave the Indian Air Force and of course.
[59:21] Speaker 2: India, right, So the questions I asked at the beginning,
[59:24] Speaker 2: and I know the answer. Actually something told them to
[59:27] Speaker 2: me before may Beecandigat and I was quite surprised. So,
[59:31] Speaker 2: which country now is going to be the largest operator
[59:34] Speaker 2: of the make twenty one?
[59:35] Speaker 3: Surprise? Which western country will be the largest operator of
[59:38] Speaker 3: the mid twenty ones after the Indian Air Force retires them?
[59:41] Speaker 3: Is the United States of America, because there is a
[59:45] Speaker 3: company there, Drunk and International, which is a private company.
[59:49] Speaker 3: Of course, it's not the government, which has about twenty
[59:51] Speaker 3: five MIK twenty ones there. So this is a company
[59:54] Speaker 3: that specializes in renting out aircraft for aggressive training, those
[59:57] Speaker 3: kinds of things. They have a couple of these machines
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: lying around. They have over one hundred fighter jets. I
[1:00:02] Speaker 3: was pleasantly surprised to discover that they are over one
[1:00:06] Speaker 3: hundred aircraft. Twenty five of them are MIKE twenty ones.
[1:00:09] Speaker 3: So that's a good fun fact there for you. That
[1:00:12] Speaker 3: the United States, which is like those American pilots who
[1:00:17] Speaker 3: wanted a closer look at the mid twenty one. It's
[1:00:20] Speaker 3: as close as it gets. They're all there, and I
[1:00:22] Speaker 3: think it's in Miami, Florida, Donald Trump Country.
[1:00:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this is the perfect note then
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: to end the episode is, which also I think kind
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: of describes the sheer lethality of the mid twenty one
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: is what and how is it linked to top Con
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: the actual flight school in the in the US on
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: which the movie Top This movie.
[1:00:40] Speaker 3: Is based absolutely, And it just has to do with
[1:00:44] Speaker 3: the Vietnam War where the usfos took a lot of casualties,
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: a lot of aircraft were you know, knocked out of
[1:00:54] Speaker 3: the skies, and a lot of them by the mid
[1:00:56] Speaker 3: twenty ones flown by the Vietnamese pilots the North Vietnam
[1:00:59] Speaker 3: Is and this outstanding machine knocked out so many phantoms
[1:01:04] Speaker 3: and F one O four's that the USAF and the
[1:01:08] Speaker 3: US Navy in particular said, my god, we've got to
[1:01:11] Speaker 3: go back to you know, dog fighting and tactics and
[1:01:14] Speaker 3: all of that. And that's when they set up that
[1:01:16] Speaker 3: flight training school in Miramar, Florida nineteen sixty eight, if
[1:01:20] Speaker 3: I remember correctly, just after the Vietnam War, and that's
[1:01:24] Speaker 3: what Top Gun is. The origin of that, you know,
[1:01:28] Speaker 3: flying Academy is the experience with the mid twenty one,
[1:01:33] Speaker 3: and of course other may be you know, jets in
[1:01:36] Speaker 3: North Vietnam, but primarily the mid twenty because the mid
[1:01:38] Speaker 3: twenty one was the outstanding star of the North Vietnamese
[1:01:41] Speaker 3: Air Force and that's when the US got a root shock,
[1:01:44] Speaker 3: and that's how you have Top Gun. And of course
[1:01:47] Speaker 3: in the movie Top Gun, the first one, there were
[1:01:52] Speaker 3: mid thirty mid twenty twos of something they were called,
[1:01:55] Speaker 3: and they were played by American aircraft. You know, I
[1:01:58] Speaker 3: think they were F five, yeah, if I remember correctly. Yeah,
[1:02:02] Speaker 3: So the Mik twenty one is there. It's there in
[1:02:03] Speaker 3: the room, and it's primarily because of the Vietnam War
[1:02:07] Speaker 3: that it's such a big thing. As you mentioned, those
[1:02:10] Speaker 3: American pilots, all of them have been second generation pilots,
[1:02:13] Speaker 3: you know who. The legend of the Mike twenty one
[1:02:16] Speaker 3: is something that's always there in the room, in a
[1:02:19] Speaker 3: room when you're talking to Air Force pilots. So you know,
[1:02:21] Speaker 3: US Navy pilots, they all respect the Mike twenty one
[1:02:24] Speaker 3: for what it did back then.
[1:02:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And I think the legend of the Make
[1:02:28] Speaker 2: twenty one will live on even if the aircraft itself
[1:02:31] Speaker 2: does not anymore in active flying service with the Air Force.
[1:02:35] Speaker 1: Thanks on the fantastic discussion. I loved every bit of it.
[1:02:38] Speaker 3: As always, Thanks so much, thanks for having me there, and.
[1:02:41] Speaker 2: Thanks as always to our lessons than yours. That's it
[1:02:43] Speaker 2: for this week's Defense Stores For more, tune in next week.
[1:02:46] Speaker 2: Till then, Stay safe and not cross any boundaries without passport.
[1:02:56] Speaker 5: KB the Haske marquis Ya jhem or Hard episode Arch
[1:03:15] Speaker 5: the Radio Apple podcast Spotify Ko audio played form sun
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